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EUâ€™s Neighbourhood Investment Facility launched

07 May 2008 09:53 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Lachin Sultanova-APA. The EUâ€™s Neighbourhood Investment Facility (NIF) has formally launched today. Press Service of the EU delegation in Azerbaijan told APA that the NIF was a key instrument of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and would mobilize additional funding for infrastructure projects mainly in the energy, transport and environment sectors in the entire area of the European Neighbourhood Policy by providing grant support for lending operations of public European financial institutions. The Commission has already made available â‚¬100 out of the â‚¬700 million it intends to allocate to the NIF for the period 2007-2013. On top of this, the Facility is open to contributions from all EU Member States. Germany (â‚¬10 million), Italy (â‚¬1 million) and Sweden (â‚¬1 million) plan to allocate funds to the NIF in 2008. It is expected that the Facility will generate up to â‚¬5-6 billion of lending. Geographically NIF operations will focus on countries with ENP Action Plans agreed with the EU, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Georgia, Jordan, Lebanon, Moldova, Morocco, the occupied Palestinian territory, Tunisia and Ukraine.